congressman akin is refusing to drop out following his controversial comments on rape, tweeting last night the liberal media is trying to make me drop out. and by liberal media, we assume congressman akin is referring to sean hannity, ann coulter, charles krauthammer, the national review and the "wall street journal" editorial boards, all of whom have called for him to exit the race. or maybe he's talking about liberal leaders like mitch mcconnell, reince priebus, mitt romney, paul ryan, john mccain, kelly ayotte, roy blount, the tea party express and last night, sarah palin. those liberals and their liberal pressure. in reality, this seems to be more of an act of mutiny within the republican ranks. this morning, akin seemed to acknowledge that, saying he stands with the people, not the party leadership. >> the people of missouri chose me to be their candidate and i don't believe it's right for party bosses to decide to override those voters and it makes me uncomfortable to think that the party bosses are going to dictate who runs as opposed

to the election process. >> akin is going rogue, even telling the party's presidential candidate to back off. >> if you were in romney's position, don't you think that he may have bit this thing up and made a bigger deal about it than he needed to? why couldn't he run his race and i run mine? >> even if akin is downgraded in the coming days to nothing more than a low pressure anomaly, he spawned other storm systems by bringing the republican stance on abortion to the forefront of the debate. the obama campaign is liking paul ryan to todd akin, based on a bill ryan and akin co-sponsored last year defining forcible rape. and even mitt romney may have trouble distancing himself from the controversy. the doctor behd akin's rape theory, physician jack wilke, a major proponent of the theory that women don't get pregnant from rape, was a romney supporter in 2007. romney's campaign called him quote, an important surrogate for governor romney's pro-life and pro-family agenda.

this incident highlights what the republican party confirmed last night would be part of their national platform, opposing abortion in all circumstances, including rape and incest. that's churned up waters in massachusetts, where republican congressman scott brown is calling for change in the party platform, saying i believe this is a mistake because it fails to recognize the views of pro-choice republicans like myself. finally, there could be one other high pressure system looking to rain on the republican party. vice president joe biden indicated he will be down in florida during the convention. perhaps unsurprisingly, the tampa mayor said this morning that he's prepared to cancel the rnc if necessary but at this point, it's unclear what's more threatening, the meteorological chaos or the storm brewing over the republican convention. that was a lot of weather, maggie haberman. >> lot of storm systems. >> setting aside the practical implications of a hurricane hitting tampa, and throwing

plans into disarray, it would not seem like the republican party has teed up this week in the way that they perhaps might have hoped to leading into the convention in terms of the issues that we are focused on right now. >> in fairness to the republican party at large, this is not what they expected to be dealing with. i think that they have done the best that they can with a certain set of circumstances that is beyond their control. todd akin is a congressman but he is not, you know, a member of the establishment. he has no connections to the party in any real way. he won a primary in which a lot of people were against him, among them sarah palin, who spoke out last night. she supported sarah steelman. so he doesn't feel like he has to heed these calls to get out. he has certain practical realities which is the money will stop coming in and he will have to figure out what to do. but there is a reason why this is going on. i think that the republican party as a whole feels like they have done what they can to communicate they don't agree with this, but as you say, this remains an ongoing -- the confluence of events here, if i can go back to your storm

analogy for a minute, you have akin saying what he said, you have the platform committee making its decisions yesterday, and then you've got the convention coming next week. they need the convention to go on. if the weather ends up canceling the convention this is a huge problem because they need the convention to turn the page on a lot of this. >> i also would say look, yes, todd akin is not something the republican party can control, but mitt romney is the one that got in bed with this physician that had this theory on rape and paul ryan co-sponsored legislation that established a more narrow definition for rape. that's stuff they did that they can control and those are choices they made. >> the paul ryan thing is a very specific issue. i think that was the case prior to what todd akin did and it is the case if that had not happened at all. >> it wouldn't have come up as a big matter of discussion. >> i don't know -- i think the democrats had made it pretty clear they will -- >> but now it will come up at the convention which is a different issue. it's not -- >> how is it going to come up? >> you have -- >> joe biden is going to drive a bus around it. >> you have people in the republican party who want a very

strict sort of definition against all abortion in all cases and you have a lot of members of the republican party who don't agree with that. >> this happens in every convention. >> it does. but now it adds fuel to the possible fire. >> i'll tell you how it comes up at the republican party for the reason that alex mentioned, which is the republican platform says that they are going to outlaw through a constitutional amendment, women's rights to make these reproductive choices even in the case of rape or incest. that is the national position. that platform gets ratified at the party and they don't control what the press and the voters do when they pay attention to these things and that's the problem here. we can talk about -- the convention does do this and it matters in the same way that it matters that when you have civil rights language in the platform. these things matter in american history and they matter to voters who aren't concerned about the stage management of washington republicans but are rather concerned about whether this is really what mitt romney wants to run on. this is his platform. if he's not strong enough to

stand up to delegates, to local elected officials who think there shouldn't be this right even in the case of rape or incest, then he's not that far away from the spirit and the problem that mr. akin has put on the table, even if they don't share the same medical interpretation. that's the problem with the republicans. >> that's right. this isn't a case where you have an outliar who made some gaffe. what's happened here is somebody had articulated at an inopportune moment the actual mainstream position of the republican party today. that's what the establishment is freaking out about in the party is that this came up at a moment they didn't want it to and in language they didn't want it to. but it's not some kind of fringe position. it's a position that paul ryan was co-sponsoring legislation on, that the party itself has adopted a platform on, so that's the problem as with much of what romney does, he tries to keep it out of sight. his mormonism, his tax returns, his energy policy, his abortion policy. the problem is that it's gone public in a way that they didn't want. >> the thing that i also want to know, maggie, i would love to get your read on this, we have

new nbc news/"wall street journal" polling numbers out, we will talk about them later on the show, but specifically on the question of women. obama is leading romney by ten points, 51% to 41%. when asked who is better in dealing with issues of concern to women, 52% go for obama, 24% go to romney. we understand that the president has been, for lack of a better term, killing it among single educated women, but -- and to a certain degree, john heilemann always says women are to some degree baked in the cake for obama, but mitt romney still can't afford to just give up the female vote entirely, especially married women and independent women. one of the most damaging things about this entire debate is heretofor, sort of independent women who think mitt romney doesn't seem like a bad guy, paul ryan seems like a young exciting guy, he's energized the conservative base, where they might be attracted to that ticket. then you hear this as i call, i don't know what else to call it, this hocus-pocus rape theorizing

that has been endorsed by mitt romney at one point in his career and that paul ryan has been attached to. what does that do to a ticket that's trying to get more women on its side? >> i think this is what democrats are looking very strongly at pushing and i think this is why this is of huge concern to republicans. this is a branding issue as much as not talking about the specifics, it's just this is the republican party as a brand and we talk about this a lot, has a problem. this does not help that in any way, shape or form. mitt romney had a double digit deficit with women voters prior to this. this is probably not going to help it. it has been offset that he is doing much better among men than the president is doing. but this is not going to make it any easier. i think that this is why, you know, we had a story in politico about this over the weekend prior to what akin said, that this was where democrats were heading already. they were planning on paul ryan's record on certain issues like abortion, on lily ledbetter and pay and so forth, they're conservative and this is something they were planning on

making a thing of, to say mitt romney isn't, where independents can feel very good about him. we're going to try to make it that much easier to cleave him to the right of his party. >> can i add one thing on the women's vote? women are people. when you tell people -- >> don't tell the gop that. >> do tell us, too, how women feel. >> you tell me if i'm wrong. when you tell people things that they know to be false and you claim them to be true, you run into a lot more trouble than when you have good faith idealogical disagreement. we know and i think a lot of voters have picked up on the fact that this republican party is more idealogically extreme than other iterations but the other problem here is they are cognitively extreme and it's true on women's rights and true on global warming and it was true on what would happen if you didn't raise the debt ceiling in the markets. different communities that knew a lot, republican bankers said wait a minute, you guys, tea party, you're wrong, you can't

minimize what happens if you don't raise the debt ceiling. a larger constituency than bankers, a majority of voters are women and i don't care if you're a pro-life or pro-choice woman, or pro-life guy or pro-choice guy, when you get out to this cognitive extremism which is becoming baseline requirement in elements of the republican party, not all republicans but elements, run into a lot of problems because you're telling people things they know to be false about their own bodies or their own minds or their own science that they've looked into. i think that's a huge problem even with pro-life women. >> there's a very -- that, i mean, that's a different point. but there's a very small window of people, women or men, who are persuadable voters. that's all we're talking about right now. what are they going to respond to. this is going to be something that will make people vote against mitt romney or not. we won't know that in the polling for another couple of days. this poll was taken -- >> conveniently, when the republican national convention starts. >> by the end of this week, i suspect we'll see polling dribbling out. >> i don't think you need a poll to figure out how this plays. i think that's why republicans

in washington want him out of the race. >> it is a serious, serious problem for republicans. >> it sets up an incredibly interesting game of chicken going back to akin himself for a second which i think is so the presumption now is that akin's going to fight the tough fight for a little while and eventually buckle when they come to repossess the office furniture in his headquarters but you know, eventually if he doesn't do that, in good time, the republican party, what are they going to do, just give up the seat? they're going to have to support him. >> you know who will cut todd akin a check? claire mccaskill. >> that's $2 million well spent. >> we have to leave it there. after the break, tryin' ryan. paul ryan lets voters get to know him. vice president joe biden introduces americans to the ryan/romney economic vision. >> they call their new plan for the economy new, bold and gutsy. i ask the rhetorical question. what's gutsy about giving millionaires another tax break?

it's not only not new, it's not fair, it's not right, and the people who pay the price for their new plan are the middle class and the working poor. folks, the middle class is coming back. they have been ravaged. they have been ravaged. but they're starting to come back. >> joe biden in his shirt sleeves. we'll do a romney style cost benefit analysis of having paul ryan on the ticket, next. [ maoua afn.ic onte wi c

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i'm a catholic deer hunter. i am happy to be clinging to my guns and my religion. >> that was paul ryan speaking last night as he tries to unveil himself as a candidate. we learn more about paul ryan. he's most recently referenced president obama's remarks from a 2008 fund-raiser and is traveling the country, appearing to embrace his role as governor romney's attack dog. last night, he opened up a new line of criticism, seizing on the president's national security reference. >> i've gone to afghanistan and iraq to meet with our troops, to learn from them. obviously i have a lot more experience than barack obama did when he became president. but if you take a look at our current posture, president obama is quote, unquote, leading from behind. >> but as ryan takes on the president, it's not clear he's doing all that much to help the romney ticket. according to a new nbc news/"wall street journal" poll, 54% say romney's choice of ryan doesn't affect their vote. while 22% of americans say they

are more likely to vote for romney because of paul ryan, 23% say ryan makes them less likely to vote for the presumptive republican nominee. that makes paul ryan a net negative. eric bates, the numbers are in. now, of course we know polls, what are they good for, who knows. however, it is interesting that if you look in sort of the past last two election cycles, sarah palin gave john mccain a 9% gain. president obama got an eight-point gain with joe biden on the ticket. shockingly, john edwards gave john kerry a 21 point gain on the ticket when his choice was announced. >> those were the days. >> they were the days. we just spent the last 15 minutes talking about the storms that have been churned up by paul ryan and some of his policies, certainly his budget, his positions on medicare. does the romney campaign, when they look at numbers like that, is that cause for concern in terms of, you know, the choice that they made? >> sure.

romney needed to change the game. he thought this was a game changer. but his play was to gin up the base. his play wasn't to the middle. the base was already on board with him. very reluctantly on board, very un-happily on board, but on board. so this goes back to the point earlier. there are fewer and fewer people who are persuadable at this point. i think that's changed from past elections at this point in the cycle. positions are much, much more hardened now than they have been in the past and it's very difficult to find a way to move anybody and that's part of the problem with the debate in washington, not just the optics of a campaign. >> i think it also goes to the timeline. i worked for over a year on the kerry/edwards campaign. i remember when we picked edwards there was a lot of excitement. one thing everyone in politics can agree on is that john edwards was a declining investment and over time -- >> i think much the same would be argued about sarah palin. >> sarah palin, exactly, was a big bubble and there was a lot

of sugar high, then it faded. so i think what the romney campaign is saying here is we don't want a candy bar. we want an energy bar. and we know we will be doing some explaining right out the gate but we think -- >> that's actually pretty good. >> think so? >> yeah. continue. >> i have analogies for you later. >> continue. >> i do think the republican argument here, there are a lot of reasons why i differ with paul ryan. we talked about them on the show. but i think the republican argument here is give it some time, let paul ryan get up on that stage, you know, on the second to last night, let him get around the country, let him explain why he is an idealogical person with roots in not only republican politics but roots in trying to deal with america's problems. that's the way they put it. i do think that's substantively different than sarah palin even though i have a lot of differences with it. >> i think ari's point is right. the big unveiling of paul ryan is really at the convention in terms of what the party wants to accomplish with people getting to know him. he's a congressman from wisconsin who has never run for

national office before. he's not very well known. he's well known in political circles, not very well known across the country. i think they're hoping they can obviously work out some of the kinks and a lot of the sort of whatever you call it that he has with the romney sort of plan which is they don't agree on a lot of things and there's a lot of certain things they need to work out. they will obviously do that. they will have a big speech. we will see maybe a longer term investment payoff there. >> i think buried in all the numbers that we got out last night was this very i think astute observation made by peter hart, one of our pollsters. he says this election has moved from a referendum to a choice. mitt romney is starting to accumulate a number of negatives on the personal front and issues front. that is a big deal, because we have been talking and the republicans have been talking for the better part of this campaign cycle, they want and need this to be a referendum on president obama's record on the economy and it is now a choice between two different candidates. when you look at things like likability, obama is leading 58% to 23%, caring about average

people, 52% to 30%. are you mainstream or out of step, president obama leads romney by ten points, 54% to 44% and dealing with issues of concern to seniors, which is important as we talk about demographics and targeting certain sectors of the electorate, obama is leading ten points. eight points. 12 points. >> call it nine. >> you can see how strong my math is. >> we get the idea. >> the point is, the president certainly is not scott-free. he has not won the confidence of the american voters on the question of the economy but the fact is the contours of this race have fundamentally changed. >> they have. i would say one thing. i always reject the referendum versus choice thing as a bit of messaging pablum because all elections are choices. what mitt romney is trying to do is run a campaign that's nothing about him. he was trying not to talk about himself except in the most one-dimensional way possible. he has been trying to offer as little by way of specifics as possible. so picking paul ryan does change

that because that does tell him or is meant to convey something about himself. it has been sold as this was a bold pick because of what paul ryan says about governing and what he has told us about his own budget plan and so the problem becomes how do you get sort of the bold thing without the details. >> exactly. >> the flavor. >> that is the issue. so if they can present this at the convention in a very forward-looking way, this is all about how you move the country forward, right, and so the question is if they can do sort of the here's the door forward thing, then they have a very strong chance. this is a very close election. if they can't sort of sell the door forward, then they have a problem. and this is one thing i would say that i think tactically in terms of the medicare fight which was inevitable once they picked ryan, i agree there will be a medicare fight at some level, not quite like this, a woman's issue fight not quite like todd akin. but i do think they have done

what they need to do on medicare. this is, however, not really a strategy for the next two months, do they want to be having a fight that's about medicare every single day and there is a difference between waging a tactical war and that having to be your overarching message. >> you also have democrats or at least the president's campaign semi-eager to have a debate on policy, specifically as it pertains to medicare and entitlement reform. >> i think they both say they want this fight. i think one side might want it more than the other. >> it is interesting. the theme of the rnc is a better future, emphasis on future, no specifics on what's going to get better. we'll see how that plays out in coming days. coming up, governor romney gave a commencement speech this past may that focused on religion, making no mention of his mormon faith. >> central to america's rise to global leadership is our judeo-christian tradition with its vision of the goodness and possibilities of every human life. from the beginning, this nation has trusted in god, not man.

there is no greater force for good in the nation than christian conscience in action. >> after months spent avoiding the mormon question, the romney campaign has decided it's time to talk openly about the governor's religion. mckay coppins recently attended church with mitt romney and we will discuss issues of faith when he joins the panel, ahead. [ male announcer ] if you stash tissues

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apple cinnamon chex. i believe in my mormon faith and i live by it. my faith is the faith of my fathers. i will be true to them and to my beliefs. some believe that such a confession of my faith will sink my candidacy. if they're right, so be it, but i think they underestimate the american people. >> that was governor romney in 2007, one of the few times he's publicly spoken about his religion. for much of this year, romney has effectively steered clear of his mormon faith. but as the republican convention nears, his campaign appears to be ready to embrace it. next week, a member of the mormon church will deliver the invocation and romney's work as a mormon bishop will be part of the convention narrative. for a man who has done much to throw a veil over his own religious practice, it is a pivot point. throughout the campaign, romney has made a concerted effort to align himself with judeo-christian beliefs, not

mentioning key differences in mormonism, including the tenet that there is not a unified trinity and that god is a physical presence. in a recent interview, romney alluded to those differences, saying quote, every religion has its own unique doctrines and history. these should not be bases for criticism but rather a test of our tolerance. religious tolerance would be a shallow principle indeed if it were only reserved for faiths with which we agree. this past sunday, romney revealed even more when he allowed buzzfeed's mckay coppins to attend religious services with him. coppins writes quote, the working thesis of the chattering class has been that romney's discussion of his faith for political reasons but as a sacrament meeting wound down sunday with the congregation singing a hymn titled "i need thee every hour" and romney fervently joining in, the election seemed far away. mckay coppins joins us now. his article is called "i went to church with mitt romney sunday morning." a literal title. it's really fascinating.

you are mormon and attended services with the governor, and i guess in reading this story, one of the most important take-aways was as you saw, the chattering class thinks this is all sort of part of him trying to be protective or not protective but sort of not tell anyone anything substantive about anything that might be controversial or at least that's what the chattering class is saying. but you seem to paint a picture that this is the last vestige of mitt romney's sort of personal life that hasn't been dissected. >> yeah. i've been part of the chattering class. i have written that story several times and i think obviously there are political reasons to avoid the topic of faith. but when i was there, one of the things that struck me in that meeting was that it all seemed so normal. it was one of the only moments i've seen romney this entire campaign where he didn't act like a presidential candidate. he was playing with his grandkids, he was singing hymns, he was, you know, he was being a mormon church goer and it wasn't a big deal there. so i can certainly see why he

wouldn't want to make that part of the campaign or at least put that off as long as he possibly can. when you're in this campaign bubble, everything about your life is politicized. he might have wanted to just hold on to that for a little bit longer. >> at the same time, one of the major criticisms that's been thrown at romney is that he needs to humanize himself because he seems so wooden and here you say in this moment, perhaps he can only be sort of humanized when he's on guard which i guess is a catch 22 for mitt romney. you also said that inside the church at the service, he wasn't treated in any sort of special fashion. there was no shouting out to mitt romney, no sort of pleas for votes at the end of the service. tell us a little more about that. >> yeah. he walked into church, he shook hands with a couple people. he wasn't even really the focus of the meeting. there was a young woman who had just returned from a mormon mission who was telling her stories as a missionary and that's what most people were focused on and going up to say hi to her. and he did the same thing.

it's also important to note that this congregation that he was attending in new hampshire is a popular vacation destination for kind of wealthy elite families along the east coast, the marriotts were there, the marriott hotel chain, obviously. so having rich, successful, wealthy people -- >> who also happen to be mormons. >> yeah. it's not a huge deal to have mitt romney there. >> maggie, when we talk about american attitudes towards mormonism, there has been a lot of analysis about trepidation with the american public accepting a mormon president but the polling seems to indicate, when a question was asked in july what is mitt romney's religion, 60% of the country acknowledged that he is mormon. 9% thought he was other and 32% of the country said they don't know. and when asked whether the american public was comfortable with mitt romney's religion, of those who knew he was a mormon, 60% said they were comfortable. 19% said they were uncomfortable. 21% said it doesn't matter. really, 81% basically on his

side vis a vis mormonism. >> what you've seen in the last week, mckay has really gotten to this, essentially there was a decision by the campaign, we're just going to show this is -- it is a religion that people don't necessarily know as much about as other religions, perhaps, such as catholicism and so forth. but we're just going to show -- demystify this. you're saying those numbers show there is not maybe that much but it's an unknown factor for the campaign. they are planning at the convention, i think, to have a mormon bishop at some point. i think they are going to do a bit more references to religion. look, it is a significant part of mitt romney's background because it's not just what his religion is. he was a bishop in the church. >> right. they will be introducing that narrative. >> there is a lot of talk on this show, too, about he needs the humanize himself and talk about the things most important to him, his faith, his money. but one of the things i think is true about that little clip we saw of him talking is just how

incredibly awkward it is. he went into a whole other mode of roboticism. >> has nothing to do with what he's talking about. >> i think it did. i think it was even appreciably worse. >> but there were, before you get into a fist fight, there were two -- >> i don't care to get into a fist fight. >> you think he's the same? >> i think he's got troubles on this front regardless of the topic. >> i would like to make a point here which is in 2007, which is the sound we led in with, mitt romney is making a much more forceful defense of mormonism insofar as he is mentioning the word mormon. >> he also used the word mormon. he hasn't said the word mormon all year on the record. >> even more stilted when he goes out of his way to say judeo-christian. >> i'm just saying he's not exactly someone -- he's got general discomforts talking about himself and mckay, who sees him more than i do would agree with this. i didn't notice the huge discernible difference but maybe i'm wrong. >> also i think that was from

2007. he was just worse at this in 2007 than he is now. >> i thought he was better in 2007 insofar as he was up front and sort of almost -- very forceful in terms of this is the faith, this is the faith of my fathers. >> look at something else we were talking about earlier, todd akin, someone who is pretty seriously intent on putting his faith into the laws of the country and then we are talking about mitt romney, who is very private about his own religion even though it's a big deal to him. i think it's admirable. i really enjoyed your story because it did seem normal, his conduct in the church, it seemed there was nothing unusual or mysterious about it. >> you could also say mitt romney has wrapped his arms around evangelical christian politics insofar as they are animating the far right part of his base and he is terrified of alienating them. >> there's a difference between embracing the politics and having it come from some theological commitment. >> fair enough. mckay coppins, thank you as always. very interesting story. i encourage everybody to read

it. a programming note, tomorrow's nbc "rock center" will devote an hour to being mormon in america. that's thursday at 10:00 p.m. eastern. after the break, scientist bill nye has found a new lab partner. president obama. can the two science lovers convince the country the republican experiment is a dangerous one? we will ask bill nye when he joins us live, next. ♪ [ male announcer ] you've reached the age where you don't back down from a challenge.

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begins with back pain and a choice. take advil, and maybe have to take up to four in a day. or take aleve, which can relieve pain all day with just two pills. good eye. some of our children's greatest experience has been in the smaller classrooms. >> but mitt romney says class sizes don't matter and he supports paul ryan's budget which could cut education by 20%. >> you can't do this by shoving 30, 35 people in a class and just teaching to some tests. >> that is a new tv ad from president obama, who is right now meeting with teachers at kenyon springs high school. governor romney hasn't laid out what specific domestic programs he would cut but his running mate provides a guide.

in addition to gutting education, congressman paul ryan targets research. the center for american progress shows that while the government invested $104 per person on science and technology research in 2010, the ryan budget would cut that by 24% by 2021, to just $79 per person. what's more, government investment in new technology including clean energy has become a bogeyman for romney supporters. >> you know how much money he invested in so-called green energy companies? $90 billion. $90 billion. >> the ryan budget also cuts $3 billion from clean energy in 2013 alone. big oil companies, however, would get a decade of tax breaks worth $40 billion and speaking of big oil, the ceo of exxonmobil hosted a fund-raiser for governor romney yesterday in houston, part of a $7 million fund-raising jag in the state. bill nye is the engineer guy, the author guy and of course, the science guy. now he's also taking on the moniker, the obama guy. welcome, bill nye, to the program. great to have you.

>> thank you, alex. >> so bill, you have endorsed president obama and i guess i want to ask what about the president's platform do you find appealing and i guess second to that is what do you make of the current republican debate over science and education, which is very nearly turned the word science into a four-letter word? >> yeah. it's troubling. this country, the success of this country throughout the world, the reason we are the united states is acknowledged as a world leader is because of our abilities in science and technology. and one of the wonderful things incidentally about the space program is in general, it engages people from both sides of the aisle, from red and blue states, but everybody supports space exploration for the betterment of humankind and so on. every picture from nasa is public domain, for example. but if you have, i just encourage all voters, all taxpayers and voters, to

evaluate these guys, these people running for president, on their environmental policy. i encourage you as a journalist to ask pointed questions of these candidates about the environment and their policies especially with regard to climate change. climate change is serious business. we had the hottest summer anybody can remember. 16 of the last 17 years have been the hottest on record. climate change is a real problem and the sooner we start to address it, the better. not just for everybody in the whole world, but also for our economy. other economies, people around the world are beginning to appreciate, if you go to the developing world, people are beginning to appreciate the value of clean water, of clean air. when you lose those things, it's very hard to get them back. so we have these hard-fought, hard-won, rather, regulations that as near as i can tell, the other side wants to eliminate. like there was a fund-raiser

yesterday, as i understand it, from big oil. they're not supporting the president, they're supporting the other side and there's historic reasons for this, but it's not in anybody's best interest to have the environment degrade. and there's one more thing, alex. >> there are so many things, bill. the list goes on. but please continue. >> well, i warn voters on both sides, watch out for mr. romney in the regard that -- in the sense that he changes. historically, he'll be this way and then he'll be that way so if you're a conservative voter, you may think you're getting the policies that he's espousing now with regard to health care and climate change, but after he gets, you know, you campaign from the fringe and you get the nomination from the fringe but you campaign for the presidency from the center, mr. romney may go back to the center so conservative voters may not get

what they bargain for, and then to progressive voters -- >> that could actually be a good thing given how mitt romney's environmental policy and energy policy seems to be doubling down on coal, coal, coal and drill, baby drill. but i want to open this up to the folks on the panel right now, because you know, eric, we have talked about climate change, we talked about it last week in light of the droughts that were happening. it is no longer just an environmental issue. this is an economic issue. we talk about american competitiveness and the road forward. the u.s. among 34 developed nations, this is according to the organization for economic cooperation and development, the oecd, we are ranking 25th in math and 17th in science. we are not pursuing any sort of feasible energy policy, there is no bipartisan support to get anything pushed through congress and you talk about science and technology and engineering and math careers, we are not giving our students the tools that they need. we are divesting in education and made science, whether it's climate change or actually new technology, a four-letter word.

what's happening in american culture to account for this shift? >> one of the interesting things, maybe bill can address this, is what i see as a lack -- the loss of scientific authority. it used to be a scientist told us something after investigating it and going through the scientific method and we went oh, that's real. global warming is real. evolution is real. i think todd akin's comments relate to this because what's startling about them is how much it reveals him to be totally ignorant of human physiology. it's not the use of the word legitimate. it's the idea that women can't get pregnant by rape and other people came out and said well, i disagree with him, as if it's a point to be debated. it's not a point to be debated. it's wrong. so we have a loss of scientific authority where we can't even agree that science can give us an answer through that method and i'm wondering if bill has any theory about why that's happened. >> that's a great question from eric about the role of science and this sort of understanding that scientists know things and we should listen to them. what do you make of it? >> well, there's a tradition in

journalism to present both sides of an argument and so what people on the other side have been able to do on the last, depends how you reckon, say three decades, starting with smoking, is confuse or conflate or get voters to not fully grasp the difference between plus or minus, scientific uncertainty versus the whole thing is questionable. this is to say, if you say it will get warm by 1.7 degrees celsius over the next century and somebody else says it will be 1.5, that's plus or minus a little bit but that doesn't mean the whole idea is wrong. so the last 30 years especially, people have -- people from the cold war era really have been able to introduce the idea that uncertainty is the same as doubt of the whole theory. so the pendulum is swinging. the deal for me is in science

education and as a long-time environmentalist, is this is a turning point in human history. if we don't address climate change now, we will have problems for decades and centuries to come. this is a huge opportunity for the united states to be a world leader in this and this is, as you pointed out, these are science questions that are being questioned -- that are being defused with the idea that uncertainty is the same as doubt. it's really frustrating and it's of deep concern in the science education community. >> it's very interesting that bill mentions tobacco, because we ran a story a few years ago showing that the climate deniers actually use the tobacco industry's arguments against the link between smoking and cancer as a model for climate denial. >> yeah. that's true. >> over the past few decades we have economic interests that are very vested in casting doubt on scientific certainty. >> bill nye, i am in complete agreement that this is a huge turning point for the country.

the roads are indeed forking and the choices we make now will most certainly have repercussions as far as america's future. thank you so much for joining us. i'm sorry we have to leave it there. we hope to bring you back soon to talk more about this. >> thank you very much. coming up, former secretary of state albright has advice for democrats. blame w. forever. that's next. [ male announcer ] research suggests the health of our cells plays a key role throughout our entire lives. ♪ one a day men's 50+ is a complete multi-vitamin designed for men's health concerns as we age. ♪ it has more of seven antioxidants to support cell health. that's one a day men's 50+ healthy advantage. by what's getting done.. measure commitment the twenty billion dollars bp committed

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welcome back. time for "what now." speaking at an obama rally last week in colorado, former secretary of state madeleine albright said democrats should blame president george w. bush forever for the country's current problems. 68% of americans believe president bush deserves a great or moderate amount of blame for the economy. 52% said the same of president obama. is history going to look kindly on george w. bush's

administration? >> i'm going to go with no. >> that's it? >> i don't want to judge history for the historians. >> maybe. maybe not. >> let's talk the present day. we're not far from 2008, it is now 2012, and i think secretary albright's comments were said in jest and also, i mean, i think there is a tide beginning to turn where people are sort of looking back with a kind of glossy golden hue on the dave's george w. bush. >> do you really think that? >> i do. i do. >> two points. one is that the past is never past. we are always talking about reagan and jfk and we will always be talking about george w. bush. the second, though, to your point on matters of foreign policy, terrorism, how we protect this country, there's an uncomfortable fact for the left and democrats which is barack obama has ratified the key planks of george w. bush's counterterror policy. so historians will look at all that and say he set a precedent. >> you also had the issue of

context. richard nixon at the time, if you had asked us this question after watergate, we would have said hell, no, he'll never be rehabilitated. he looks like a real moderate now. >> george w. bush's policy on things like immigration and so forth -- >> we may look back on w. as a moderate. >> thanks to eric, hugo, maggie and ari. see you back here tomorrow. until then, find us on facebook.com/nowwithalex. "andrea mitchell reports" is next. good afternoon, andrea. thanks so much. coming up next, how many ways can he say he's sorry? but what is todd akin sorry about? we'll hear from david brody on this topic. plus, patrick gaspar from the obama campaign and mark mckinnen. we are tracking the storm that could disrupt the republican convention in tampa. and pete williams with a sit-down with justice scalia. all that next on "andrea mitchell reports." than what they brush with. they think all brushes are the same. they're not. that's why i tell my patients

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